Purple Cane Road

By James Lee Burke

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Purple Cane Road Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother’s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave’s mind. He’s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end.

While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory’s boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area.

Dave’s search for his mother’s killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother’s son. Purple Cane Road has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surprises from start to finish.

Reviews

Excellent read

5

By -ichardM

Absolutely one of the best written mysteries I have read. His writing style is a joy and just makes the reader reflect on life and the natural world.

More by James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke James Lee Burke, acclaimed by critics as "America's best novelist," "the Graham Greene of the bayou," and "a poet of the mystery novel," returns with his popular character, Dave Robicheaux, in a novel rich with atmosphere, ripe with menace, and filled with the kind of crackling dialogue that has made Burke a consistent New York Times best-selling author. When a beautiful teenage girl is killed, the victim of a particularly savage rape, New Iberia, Louisiana, police detective Dave Robicheaux senses from the very start of the investigation that the most likely suspect, Tee Bobby Hulin, is not the actual killer. Though a drug addict and general ne'er-do-well, Hulin just doesn't fit the profile for this kind of brutal crime. But when another murder occurs -- this victim a drugged-out prostitute who happens to be the daughter of one of the local mafia bigwigs -- all clues once again point to Tee Bobby Hulin, and the cries for arrest become too loud to ignore. The dead girl's father, however, prefers to take matters in his own hands and sets out to find -- and punish -- the killer himself. But before Robicheaux can solve these crimes and bring the killer or killers to justice, he is forced to battle his own inner demons, including a painkiller addiction, a habit that begins as the result of a brutal and humiliating beating he suffers at the hands of the mysterious and diabolical character known as Legion. A fixture in the area for years, Legion was once the overseer on a local sugarcane plantation and now gets by doing odd jobs. In temperament, however, he's still the malicious and malevolent bully he always was, a man defined by evil and seemingly possessed with supernatural skills of survival. Added to the mix, and on the good guy side of the balance sheet, is Clete Purcel, a longtime buddy of Robicheaux's and a confirmed boozer and womanizer. Clete comes to New Iberia for a visit and is quickly drawn into the struggle between the various forces of evil in the town, including Jimmy Dean Styles, a black man intent on maintaining his empire of corruption; Joe Zeroski, a trailer park mafioso with palatial aspirations -- and of course, Legion Guidry, the devil incarnate, in whom Robicheaux finds himself facing a challenge and an enemy unlike any he has ever known. And soon, what began as a duel of wits has turned into a dance of death. Gothic, dense, brutal, touching, and always compelling, Jolie Blon's Bounce is classic storytelling from a writer who has been dubbed "the Faulkner of crime fiction."

James Lee Burke Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother’s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave’s mind. He’s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end.

While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory’s boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area.

Dave’s search for his mother’s killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother’s son. Purple Cane Road has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surprises from start to finish.

James Lee Burke New York Times Bestseller

James Lee Burke’s most beloved character, Dave Robicheaux, returns in this gritty, atmospheric mystery set in the towns and backwoods of Louisiana.

DAVE ROBICHEAUX IS A HAUNTED MAN.

Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle with alcoholism, and the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts at Spanish Lake live on the edge of his vision.

During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he’s investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave’s beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves. What emerges is not only a propulsive and thrilling novel, but a harrowing study of America: this nation’s abiding conflict between a sense of past grandeur and a legacy of shame, its easy seduction by demagogues and wealth, and its predilection for violence and revenge. James Lee Burke has returned with one of America’s favorite characters, in his most searing, most prescient novel to date.

James Lee Burke “America’s best novelist” James Lee Burke returns with another New York Times bestselling entry in the Dave Robicheaux thriller series (The Denver Post).

Set against the events of the Gulf Coast oil spill, rife with “the menaces of greed and violence and man-made horror” (The Christian Science Monitor), Creole Belle finds Dave Robicheaux languishing in a New Orleans recovery unit since surviving a bayou shoot-out. The detective’s body is healing; it’s his morphine-addled mind that conjures spectral visions of Tee Jolie Melton, a young woman who in reality has gone missing. An iPod with an old blues song left by his bedside turns Robicheaux into a man obsessed…And as oil companies assign blame after an epic disaster threatens the Gulf’s very existence, Robicheaux unearths connections between tragedies both global and personal—and faces down forces that can corrupt and destroy the best of men.

James Lee Burke New York Times bestselling author and “America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post) James Lee Burke is back with the twentieth mystery in the masterful Dave Robicheaux series.

Sadist and serial killer Asa Surrette narrowly escaped the death penalty for the string of heinous murders he committed while capital punishment was outlawed in Kansas. But following a series of damning articles written by Dave Robicheaux’s daughter Alafair, Surrette escapes from a prison transport van and heads to Montana, where an unsuspecting Dave—along with Alafair; Dave’s wife, Molly; Dave’s faithful partner Clete; and Clete’s newfound daughter, Gretchen Horowitz—have come to take in the sweet summer air.

Surrette may be even worse than Dave’s old enemy Legion Guidry, a man Dave suspected might very well be the devil incarnate. But before Dave can stop Surrette from harming those he loves most, he’ll have to do battle with Love Younger, an enigmatic petrochemical magnate seeking to build an oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas, and Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo clown with a dark past whom Burke fans will recall from his Billy Bob Holland novels.

Says The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), “Already designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, Burke should get another title, say, for sustained literary brilliance in his Dave Robicheaux series.” Drawing on real events that took place in Wichita, Kansas, over a twenty-year span, Light of the World is a harrowing novel that examines the nature of evil and pits Dave Robicheaux against the most diabolical villain he has ever faced.

James Lee Burke The critically acclaimed thirtieth entry from New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, featuring Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland in an epic tale that is equal parts thriller, Western, and literary masterpiece.

James Lee Burke returns to the Texas border town of his bestseller Rain Gods, where a serial killer presumed dead is very much alive…and where sheriff Hackberry Holland, now a widower, fights for survival—his own, and of the citizens he’s sworn to protect.

When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert, Hackberry’s investigation leads him to Anton Ling, a mysterious Chinese woman known for sheltering illegals. Ling denies any knowledge of the attack, but something in her aristocratic beauty seduces Hack into overlooking that she is as dangerous as the men she harbors. And when soulless Preacher Jack Collins reemerges, the cold-blooded killer may prove invaluable to Hackberry. This time, he and the Preacher have a common enemy.

James Lee Burke From New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes his definitive, must-read first title in his famous Dectective David Robicheaux series.

New Orleans Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with police brass, with killers and hustlers, and the bottle. Lost without his wife's love, Robicheaux haunts the intense and heady French Quarter—the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he beomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the seedy world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down the criminal underworld and come to terms with his own bruised heart and demons to survive.

James Lee Burke In his most ambitious work yet, New York Times bestseller James Lee Burke tells a classic American story through one man's unforgettable life.

In 1934, sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland happens upon infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after one of their notorious armed robberies. A confrontation with the outlaws ends with Weldon firing a gun, unsure whether it hit its mark.

Ten years later, Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland barely survives the Battle of the Bulge, in the process saving the lives of his sergeant, Hershel Pine, and a young Spanish prisoner of war, Rosita Lowenstein—a woman who holds the same romantic power over him as the strawberry blonde Bonnie Parker, and is equally mysterious. The three return to Texas where Weldon and Hershel get in on the ground floor of the nascent oil business.

In just a few years’ time Weldon will spar with the jackals of the industry, rub shoulders with dangerous men, and win and lose fortunes twice over. But it is the prospect of losing his one true love that will spur his most reckless act yet—one inspired by that encounter long ago with the outlaws of his youth.

A tender love story and pulse-pounding thriller, Wayfaring Stranger "is a sprawling historical epic full of courage and loyalty and optimism and good-heartedness that reads like an ode to the American Dream" (Benjamin Percy, Poets & Writers).

James Lee Burke Dave Robicheaux was once a Louisiana homicide cop. Now he's trying to start a new life, opening up a fishing business and caring for his adopted girl, Alafair.

Compared to Louisiana, Robicheaux thought Montana would be safe--until two Native American activists suddenly go missing. When Robicheaux begins investigating, he is led into the dark world of the Mafia and oil companies. At the same time, someone from his past comes back to haunt him. Someone who was responsible for Robicheaux's flight from New Orleans--someone who brutally murdered his wife--and now is after young Alafair ...

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, BLACK CHERRY BLUES spans from the mystical streets of New Orleans to the endless mountains of Montana, and ranks among James Lee Burke's finest work--an enduring classic , darkly beautiful and thrilling.

James Lee Burke The creator of “one of America’s best mystery series” (Library Journal, starred review), New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke features Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux in a “superlative” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) bayou thriller.

The brutal murders of seven young women in a neighboring parish pull Robicheaux from his New Iberia home into a case with all the telltale signs of a serial killer. Except that one of the victims, a high school honors student, doesn’t fit. Investigating with his friend Clete Purcel, Robicheaux confronts Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer—but shocking violence sends the already blood-soaked case spiraling out of control. And with his daughter, Alafair, in love with a man who has dangerous ties to a once prominent Louisiana family, every dark fear Robicheaux harbors for himself and his daughter are on the precipice of becoming reality.

James Lee Burke Bestselling author James Lee Burke’s masterpiece is the story of a father and son separated by war, circumstance, and a race for the Holy Grail—a thrilling entry in the Holland family saga TheNew York Times Book Review has described as “saturated with the romance of the past while mournfully attuned to the unholy menace of the present.”

After a violent encounter that leaves four Mexican soldiers dead, Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland escapes the country in possession of a stolen artifact believed to be the mythic cup of Christ, earning the ire of a bloodthirsty Austrian arms dealer who places Hack’s son, Ishmael, squarely in the cross hairs of a plot to recapture his prize.

On the journey from revolutionary Mexico in 1918 to the saloons of San Antonio during the Hole in the Wall Gang’s reign, we meet three extraordinary women: the Danish immigrant who is Ishmael’s mother and Hackberry’s one true love; a brothel madam descended from the Crusader knight who brought the Shroud of Turin back from the Holy Land; and a onetime lover of the Sundance Kid, whose wiles rival those of Lady Macbeth. In her own way, each woman will aid Hack in his quest to reconcile with Ishmael, to vanquish their enemies, and to return the Grail to its rightful place.

James Lee Burke New York Times bestseller and “the best fiction writer in the country” (Bill O’Reilly, New York Times bestselling author) James Lee Burke returns with a powerful novel in the Holland Family series, an atmospheric coming-of-age story set in 1950s Texas, as the specter of the Korean War looms.

On its surface, life in 1950s Houston is as you’d expect; stoic fathers, restless teens, drive-in movies, and souped-up Cadillacs. But underneath that surface lies a world shifting under high school junior Aaron Holland Broussard’s feet. The underlying class war between the haves and have nots is growing steadily, along with the menace of conflict overseas in Korea, providing a harrowing backdrop to his growth to manhood. But when Aaron spots the beautiful Valerie Epstein at a drive-in, he steps in when he sees her fighting with her boyfriend, Grady Harrelson. Aaron’s newfound confidence helps catch Valerie’s eye, and the two begin dating. Grady is a live wire though, and presents a looming problem for Aaron.

You will recall the feelings and inspirational power of your first love, and empathize with Aaron’s extraordinary challenges to protect himself and the ones he loves in “this dark, atmospheric story” (Publishers Weekly). The Jealous Kind illustrates how first loves, friendship, violence, and power can alter what traditional America means for the people trying to find their way in a changing world.

James Lee Burke James Lee Burke’s second Robicheaux novel takes the detective out of New Orleans and into the bayou as he seeks a quieter life.

Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective’s badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana’s bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life—and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he’s known since childhood; Rocque’s hungry Cajun wife; and a Federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all...

James Lee Burke Clutching the shards, of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force.

His partner is dead--slain during a condemned prisoner's bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded and reawakened the ghost of his haunted, violent past.

Following the trail of the escaped convicts, Robicheaux is soon drawn back to New Orleans. But this time, the stakes are even higher. He's working for the DEA undercover in an attempt to incriminate Tony Cardo, a clinically insane drug lord. But all Robicheaux's really got is revenge on the mind. And he'll only be satisfied when the killers who upended his life have been brought to justice.

James Lee Burke In the waning days of summer, 2005, a storm with greater impact than the bomb that struck Hiroshima peels the face off southern Louisiana.

This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers as he is deployed to New Orleans. As James Lee Burke's new novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, begins, Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. In the midst of an apocalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city.

In a singular style that defies genre, James Lee Burke has created a hauntingly bleak picture of life in New Orleans after Katrina. Filled with complex characters and depictions of people at both their best and worst, The Tin Roof Blowdown is not only an action-packed crime thriller, but a poignant story of courage and sacrifice that critics are already calling Burke's best work.

James Lee Burke Back in print at last, James Lee Burke’s suspense-packed sixth novel in his bestselling Dave Robicheaux series delivers a heart-pounding bayou manhunt—and features “one of the colest, earthiest heroes in thrilerdom” (Entertainment Weekly ).

When Hollywood invades New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic, restless specters waiting in the shadows for Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux are reawakened—ghosts of a history best left undisturbed. Hunting a serial killer preying on the lawless young, Robicheaux comes face-to-face with the elusive guardians of his darkest torments— who hold the key to his ultimate salvation . . . or a final, fatal downfall.

James Lee Burke In a land soaked with sin, Dave Robicheaux is dueling with killers, ghosts, and a woman's revenge....

The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn't crucify Megan Flynn's father. They just didn't catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails.

Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalist, has come back to the bayou, looking for cop Dave Robicheaux. It was Dave who found the body of labor leader Jack Flynn. The sight changed the boy, shaped him as a man. And after forty years, Robicheaux is still haunted by the bizarre unsolved slaying.

Now Megan's return has stirred up the ghosts of the long-buried past, igniting a storm of violence that will rip apart lives of blacks and whites in this bayou county. And for a good cop with bad memories, hard desires, and chilling nightmares, the time has come to uncover the truth.

From the Paperback edition.

James Lee Burke Detective Dave Robicheaux is facing the most painful and dangerous case of his career. A troubled young woman breezes into his hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana. She happens to be the daughter of Robicheaux's onetime best friend -- a friend he witnessed gunned down in a bank robbery, a tragedy that forever changed Robicheaux's life.

In Pegasus Descending, James Lee Burke again explores psyches as much as evidence, and tries to make sense of human behavior as well as of his characters' crimes. Richly atmospheric, frightening in its sudden violence, and replete with the sort of puzzles only the best crime fiction creates, Burke's latest novel is an unforgettable roller coaster of passion, surprise, and regret.

The twists begin when Trish Klein -- the only offspring of Robicheaux's Vietnam-era buddy -- starts passing marked hundred-dollar bills in local casinos. Is she a good kid gone bad? A victim's child seeking revenge? A promiscuous beauty seducing everyone good within her grasp? And how does her behavior relate to the apparent suicide of another "good" girl, an ace student named Yvonne Darbonne, who apparently participated in a college frat orgy before her death?

Can Robicheaux make his peace with the demons that have haunted him since his friend's murder so many years ago? Can he figure out how a local mobster fits into all the schemes and deaths? Can Robicheaux's life be whole again when it has been shattered by so much tragedy?

Once again, Burke proves why he is the virtual poet laureate of southern Louisiana, and why his novels, especially those featuring Dave Robicheaux, stand as brilliant literature and entertainment for our time.

James Lee Burke For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. So to return there -- as he does in Last Car to Elysian Fields -- means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself up to new, yet familiar, dangers. When Robicheaux, now a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life -- and into the lives of those around him -- an ancestral evil that could destroy them all. The investigation begins innocently enough. Assisted by good friend and P.I. Clete Purcel, Robicheaux confronts the man they believe to be responsible for Dolan's beating, a drug dealer and porno star named Gunner Ardoin. The confrontation, however, turns into a standoff as Clete ends up in jail and Robicheaux receives an ominous warning to keep out of New Orleans' affairs. Meanwhile, back in New Iberia, more trouble is brewing: Three local teenage girls are killed in a drunk-driving accident, the driver being the seventeen-year-old daughter of a prominent physician. Robicheaux traces the source of the liquor to one of New Iberia's "daiquiri windows," places that sell mixed drinks from drive-by windows. When the owner of the drive-through operation is brutally murdered, Robicheaux immediately suspects the grief-crazed father of the dead teen driver. But his assumption is challenged when the murder weapon turns up belonging to someone else. The trouble continues when Father Jimmie asks Robicheaux to help investigate the presence of a toxic landfill near St. James Parish in New Orleans, which in turn leads to a search for the truth behind the disappearance many years before of a legendary blues musician and composer. Tying together all these seemingly disparate threads of crime is a maniacal killer named Max Coll, a brutal, brilliant, and deeply haunted hit man sent to New Orleans to finish the job on Father Dolan. Once Coll shows up, it becomes clear that Dave Robicheaux will be forced to ignore the warning to stay out of New Orleans, and he soon finds himself drawn deeper into a viper's nest of sordid secrets and escalating violence that sets him up for a confrontation that echoes down the lonely corridors of his own unresolved past. A masterful exploration of the troubled side of human nature and the darkest corners of the heart, and filled with the kinds of unforgettable characters that are the hallmarks of his novels, Last Car to Elysian Fields is James Lee Burke in top form in the kind of lush, atmospheric thriller that his fans have come to expect from the master of crime fiction.

James Lee Burke “It’s impossible to think of the Louisiana bayou without conjuring up James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books” (Chicago Tribune), including this early masterwork that pits the Cajun police detective against one of the New South’s most twisted and powerful forces. Oil speculator Weldon Sonnier is the patriarch of a troubled family intimately bound to the CIA, the Mob, and the Klan. Now, the murder of a cop and a bizarre assassination attempt pull Robicheaux into the Sonniers’ hellish world of madness, murder, and incest. But Robicheaux has devils of his own— and they may just destroy the tormented investigator and the two people he holds most dear.

James Lee Burke Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland must confront the past in order to save his illegitimate son from a murder conviction in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller from beloved New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke.

Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer, former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, is convinced of Lucas’s innocence—but proving it means unearthing the truth from the seething mass of deceit and corruption that spreads like wildfire in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business.

Billy Bob’s relationship with Lucas’s family is not an easy one. Years back he was a close friend of Mrs. Smothers—too close, according to her husband. But when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighboring cell in the local lock-up, he himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death, and Billy Bob incurs enemies far more dangerous than any he faced as a Ranger.

With the same electric language and hard-edged style that brought James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels to the forefront of American crime fiction, Cimarron Rose explodes with a harsh, evocative setting and unforgettable characters.

James Lee Burke A brilliantly layered novel of crime, character, and place from the two-time Edgar Award winner, Gold Dagger Award winner, and New York Times bestselling author of Sunset Limited.

Few writers in America today combine James Lee Burke's lush prose, crackling story lines, and tremendous sense of history and landscape. In Cimmaron Rose, longtime fans of the Dave Robicheaux series found that the struggles of Texas defense attorney Billy Bob Holland show Burke at his best in exploring classic American themes--the sometimes subtle, often violent strains between the haves and the have-nots; the collision of past and present; the inequities in the criminal justice system.

Heartwood is a kind of tree that grows in layers. And as Billy Bob's grandfather once told him, you do well in life by keeping the roots in a clear stream and not letting anyone taint the water for you. But in Holland's dusty little hometown of Deaf Smith, in the hill country north of Austin, local kingpin Earl Deitrich has made a fortune running roughshod and tainting anyone who stands in his way. Billy Bob has problems with Deitrich and his shamelessly callous demeanor, but can't shake the legacy of his passion for Deitrich's "heartbreak-beautiful" wife, Peggy Jean.

When Holland takes on the defense of Wilbur Pickett--a man accused of stealing an heirloom and three hundred thousand dollars in bonds from Deitrich's office--he finds himself up against not only Earl's power and influence, but also a past Billy Bob can't will away. A wonderfully realized novel, rich in Texas atmosphere and lore, and a dazzling portrait of the deadly consequences of self-delusion, Heartwood could only have been written by James Lee Burke, a writer in expert command of his craft.

James Lee Burke Critically acclaimed and bestselling crime writer James Lee Burke returns to Louisiana where his ever-popular hero, Dave Robicheaux, sleuths his way through a hotbed of sin and uncertainty. For Dave Robicheaux, life in Louisiana is filled with haunting memories of the past -- images from Vietnam, the violent streets of New Orleans, and his own troubled youth. In Crusader's Cross, a deathbed confession from an old schoolmate resurrects a story of injustice, the murder of a young woman, and a time in Robicheaux's life he has tried to forget. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin. It was back in the innocent days of the 1950s when Robicheaux and his brother, Jimmie, met her on a Galveston beach. She was pretty and Jimmie fell for her hard -- not knowing she was a prostitute on infamous Post Office Street, with ties to the mob. Then Ida was abducted and never seen again. Now, decades later, Robicheaux is asking questions about Ida Durbin, and a couple of redneck deputy sheriffs make it clear that asking questions is a dangerous game. With a series of horrifying murders and the sudden appearance of Valentine Chalons and his sister, Honoria, a disturbed and deeply alluring woman, Robicheaux is soon involved not only with the Chalons family but with the murderous energies of the New Orleans underworld. Also, he meets and finds himself drawn into a scandalous relationship with a remarkable Catholic nun. Brilliant, brooding, and filled with the author's signature lyricism, Jim Burke's latest novel is a darkly suspenseful work of literature.

James Lee Burke From two-time Edgar Award–winner and New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes a thrilling novel—now available in ebook—that pits Dave Robicheaux against the worst opponent he’s encountered yet.

It’s out there, under the salt of the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast—a buried Nazi submarine. Detective Dave Robicheaux of the New Iberia Sheriff’s office has known of its existence since childhood, when he was terrified by nightmares of the evil Nazi sailors just offshore. Then, as a teenager he stumbled upon the sunken sub while scuba diving—but for years he kept the secret of its watery grave.

But decades later, a powerful Jewish activist wants the sub raised, and Robicheaux’s knowledge puts him at the center of a terrifying struggle of conflicting desires. A neo-Nazi psychopath named Will Buchalter, who insists that the Holocaust was a hoax, wants to find the submarine first—and he’ll stop at nothing to get Robicheaux to talk.

With colorful characters, flawless plotting, and devilishly clever dialogue, Dixie City Jam is a spine-tingling suspense novel you won’t want to miss!

James Lee Burke Trouble follows Dave Robicheaux.

James Lee Burke's new novel, Swan Peak, finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcell have retreated to stay at an old friend's ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from the harsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina.

But the serenity is soon shattered when two college students are found brutally murdered in the hills behind where the Robicheauxs and Purcell are staying. They quickly find themselves involved in a twisted and dangerous mystery involving a wealthy, vicious oil tycoon, his deformed brother and beautiful wife, a sexually deviant minister, an escaped con and former country music star, and a vigilante Texas gunbull out for blood. At the center of the storm is Clete, who cannot shake the feeling that he is being haunted by the ghosts from his past -- namely Sally Dio, the mob boss he'd sabotaged and killed years before.

In this expertly drawn, gripping story, Burke deftly weaves intricate, engaging plotlines and original, compelling characters with his uniquely graceful prose. He transcends genre yet again in the latest thrilling addition to his New York Times bestselling series.

James Lee Burke James Lee Burke has been hailed as a “national treasure” (Tampa Bay Times) and in his ninth Dave Robicheaux thriller, it’s easy to see why. This taut, twisted tale of corruption in the Louisiana bayou truly brands Burke as “America’s best novelist” (Denver Post).

Aaron Crown comes from a long line of shady Cajun characters, and rumors of Klan ties swirl around his family—so his arrest for the murder of a black civil rights leader would seem to be an open and shut case. But when the man who worked hardest to put Crown away ascends to the governor’s mansion, detective Dave Robicheaux begins to suspect that Aaron may be innocent of the crime. Soon key figures in high places start pressuring Dave to drop his investigation…but that only makes him more determined to uncover the truth at any cost.

James Lee Burke From the New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke comes another brilliant Dave Robicheaux novel—now available in ebook—featuring the Louisiana detective in a race to solve a murder before more blood is shed.

The Fontenot family has lived as sharecroppers on Bertrand land for as long as anyone can remember. So why are they now being forced from their homes? And what does the murder of Della Landry—the girlfriend of New Orleans fixer Sonny Boy Marsallus—have to do with it?

Marsallus’s secrets seem tied to those of the Fontenots. But can Detective Dave Robicheaux make sense of it all before more bodies drop? In James Lee Burke’s intense and powerful crime novel, Robicheaux digs deep into the bad blood and dirty secrets of Louisiana’s past—while confronting a ragtag alliance of local mobsters and a hired assassin.

In the suspenseful series that continues to be both a critical and popular success, Burning Angel will keep you glued to the pages until the ­­­breathtaking finale.

James Lee Burke “America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post) brings back one of his most fascinating characters—Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, cousin to lawman Billy Bob Holland—in this heart-pounding bestseller.

In a heat-cracked border town, the bodies of nine illegal aliens—women and girls, killed execution-style—are unearthed in a shallow grave. Haunted by a past he can’t shake and his own private demons, Hack attempts to untangle the grisly case, which may lead to more bloodshed. Damaged young Iraq vet Pete Flores, who saw too much before fleeing the crime scene, and his girlfriend, Vikki Gaddis, are running for their lives. Sorting through the lowlifes who are hunting down Pete, and with Preacher Jack Collins, a Godfearing serial killer for hire, in the mix, Hack is caught up in a terrifying race for survival—for Pete, Vikki, and himself.

James Lee Burke A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

James Lee Burke Vintage James Lee Burke: The first novel introducing the memorable Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, coming of age against the backdrop of the civil rights era in a sultry border town.

In hot and sultry Texas, Hack, an attorney and Korean War POW, is being pushed by his wife, his brother, and his so-called friends in the oil business to run for political office. But Hack would prefer to drink, look after his beloved horses, and represent the occasional long-shot pro bono case at his law firm. When Hack attempts to overturn a conviction for an old army buddy, he finds himself embroiled in the seamy underbelly of the Texas patronage system—and in the earliest beginnings of the United Farm Workers movement, led by a beautiful woman who speaks to his heart in a way no one else has. As Hack begins to bring justice to the underserved, he finds both a new love and a new purpose.

With his skillful blend of engaging plotlines, compelling characters, and graceful prose, James Lee Burke demonstrates the shimmering clarity of vision that has made him beloved by suspense fans all over the globe.

James Lee Burke Following his acclaimed bestseller Purple Cane Road, James Lee Burke returns with a triumphant tour de force. Set in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, home to celebrities seeking to escape the pressures of public life, as well as to xenophobes dedicated to establishing a bulkhead of patriotic paranoia, Burke's novel features Billy Bob Holland, former Texas Ranger and now a Texas-based lawyer, who has come to Big Sky Country for some fishing and ends up helping out an old friend in trouble. And big trouble it is, not just for his friend but for Billy Bob himself -- in the form of Wyatt Dixon, a recent prison parolee sworn to kill Billy Bob as revenge for both his imprisonment and his sister's death, both of which he blames on the former Texas lawman. As the mysteries multiply and the body count mounts, the reader is drawn deeper into the tortured mind of Billy Bob Holland, a complex hero tormented by the mistakes of his past and driven to make things -- all things -- right. But beneath the guise of justice for the weak and downtrodden lies a tendency for violence that at times becomes more terrifying than the danger he is trying to eradicate. As USA Today noted in discussing the parallels between Billy Bob Holland and Burke's other popular series hero, David Robicheaux, "Robicheaux and Holland are two of a kind, white-hat heroes whose essential goodness doesn't keep them from fighting back. The two series describe different landscapes, but one theme remains constant: the inner conflict when upright men are provoked into violence in defense of hearth, home, women, and children. There are plenty of parallels. Billy Bob is an ex-Texas Ranger; Dave is an ex-New Orleans cop. Dave battles alcoholism and the ghosts of Vietnam; Billy Bob actually sees ghosts, including the Ranger he accidentally gunned down....But most of all, both protagonists hold a vision of a pure and simple life." In Bitterroot, with its rugged and vivid setting, its intricate plot, and a set of remarkable, unforgettable characters, and crafted with the lyrical prose and the elegiac tone that have inspired many critics to compare him to William Faulkner, James Lee Burke has written a thriller destined to surpass the success of his previous novels.

James Lee Burke This early James Lee Burke classic is available again—featuring Son Holland, the great-grandfather of beloved hero Billy Bob Holland, as he flees a Louisiana prison camp with a Native American woman and a fellow prisoner in tow.

James Lee Burke steps back three generations to reveal the lightning-paced tale of western lawman Billy Bob Holland’s great-grandfather, a fugitive swept up in the proud fight for Texan independence.

Son Holland escaped a Louisiana chain gang—but never intended to kill a prison guard during the breakaway. Terrified for his life, on the run through the bayou with fellow escapee Hugh Allison and a beautiful Indian squaw, Son flees across the river to Texas, where the only chance the travelers have for survival awaits in a violent storm of revolution led by General Houston and James Bowie.

James Lee Burke For years, critics have acclaimed the power of James Lee Burke's writing, the luminosity of his prose, the psychological complexity of his characters, the richness of his landscapes. Over the course of twenty novels and one collection of short stories, he has developed a loyal and dedicated following among both critics and general readers. His thrillers, featuring either Louisiana cop Dave Robicheaux or Billy Bob Holland, a hardened Texas-based lawyer, have consistently appeared on national bestseller lists, making Burke one of America's most celebrated authors of crime fiction. Now, in a startling and brilliantly successful departure, Burke has written a historical novel -- an epic story of love, hate, and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and Reconstruction. At the center of the novel are James Lee Burke's own ancestors, Robert Perry, who comes from a slave-owning family of wealth and privilege, and Willie Burke, born of Irish immigrants, a poor boy who is as irreverent as he is brave and decent. Despite their personal and political conflicts with the issues of the time, both men join the Confederate Army, choosing to face ordeal by fire, yet determined not to back down in their commitment to their moral beliefs, to their friends, and to the abolitionist woman with whom both have become infatuated. One of the most compelling characters in the story, and the catalyst for much of its drama, is Flower Jamison, a beautiful young black slave befriended, at great risk to himself, by Willie and owned by -- and fathered by, although he will not admit it -- Ira Jamison. Owner of Angola Plantation, Ira Jamison is a true son of the Old South and also a ruthless businessman, who, after the war, returns to the plantation and re-energizes it by transforming it into a penal colony, which houses prisoners he rents out as laborers to replace the slaves who have been emancipated. Against all local law and customs, Flower learns from Willie to read and write, and receives the help and protection of Abigail Dowling, a Massachusetts abolitionist who had come south several years prior to help fight yellow fever and never left, and who has attracted the eye of both Willie and Robert Perry. These love affairs are not only fraught with danger, but compromised by the great and grim events of the Civil War and its aftermath. As in all of Burke's writings, White Doves at Morning is full of wonderful, colorful, unforgettable villains. Some, like Clay Hatcher, are pure "white trash" (considered the lowest of the low, they were despised by the white ruling class and feared by former slaves). From their ranks came the most notorious of the vigilante groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White League and the Knights of the White Camellia. Most villainous of all, though, are the petty and mean-minded Todd McCain, owner of New Iberia's hardware store, and the diabolically evil Rufus Atkins, former overseer of Angola Plantation and the man Jamison has placed in charge of his convict labor crews. Rounding out this unforgettable cast of characters are Carrie LaRose, madam of New Iberia's house of ill repute, and her ship's-captain brother Jean-Jacques LaRose, Cajuns who assist Flower and Abigail in their struggle to help the blacks of the town. With battle scenes at Shiloh and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that no reader will ever forget, and set in a time of upheaval that affected all men and all women at all levels of society, White Doves at Morning is an epic worthy of America's most tragic conflict, as well as a book of substance, importance, and genuine originality, one that will undoubtedly come to be regarded as a masterpiece of historical fiction.

James Lee Burke Iry Paret's done his time -- two years for manslaughter in Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary. Now the war vet and blues singer is headed to Montana, where he hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. In prison, Iry tinkered with a song -- "The Lost Get-Back Boogie" -- that never came out quite right. Now, the Riordan family's problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. And Iry must get the tune right at last, or pay a fateful price.

James Lee Burke This early novel from bestselling author James Lee Burke is a gritty coming-of-age story about a young Kentucky miner growing up in the Appalachian mountains who’s torn between his family life and the lure of the city.

James Lee Burke, a writer who “can touch you in ways few writers can” (The Washington Post) brings his brilliant feel for time and place to this stunning story of Appalachia in the early 1960s. Here, Perry Woodson Hatfield James, a young man torn between family honor and the lure of seedy watering holes, must somehow survive the tempestuous journey from boyhood to manhood and escape the dark and atavistic heritage of the Cumberland Mountains.

James Lee Burke Discover the debut novel of James Lee Burke, before the creation of his now-famous Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux , as he weaves together the struggles of three very different men.

Toussaint Boudreaux, a black docker in New Orleans, puts up with his co-workers' racism because he has to, and moonlights as a prize-fighter in the hope of a better life-but the only break he gets lands him in penal servitude. J.P. Winfield, a hick with a gift for twelve-string guitar, finds his break into show-biz leads to the flipside of the American dream. Avery Broussard, descendant of an aristocratic French family, runs whiskey when what remains of his land is repossessed...

The interlocking stories of these three men are an elegy to the realities of life in 1950s Louisiana, their destinies fixed by the circumstances of their birth and time. Yet each carries the hope of redemption...

James Lee Burke One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of a dozen short stories set in James Lee Burke’s most beloved milieu, the Deep South.

“America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South—the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart and soul beat—the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast—in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.

James Lee Burke Meet Dave Robicheaux again for the first time!

This boxed set includes the first two novels featuring fan favorite Detective Dave Robicheaux, The Neon Rain and Heaven’s Prisoners, plus an excerpt from the most recent Robicheaux novel, The Glass Rainbow. Robicheaux’s creator, New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Neon Rain

Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with killers and hustlers, with police brass, and with the bottle. Robicheaux's haunted soul mirrors the intensity and dusky mystery of New Orleans' French Quarter—the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. In order to survive, Robicheaux must face down a subterranean criminal world of drug lords and arms smugglers—and come to terms with his own bruised heart.

Heaven’s Prisoners

Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his new wife, Annie, for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life—and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal thug he's known since childhood; Rocque's hungry Cajun wife; and a federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all . . .

The Glass Rainbow (excerpt)

Detective Dave Robicheaux and his partner, Clete Purcel, are on the trail of a killer responsible for the deaths of seven young women—a trail that always seems to lead back to the notorious pimp Herman Stanga, whom they both despise. But the case takes a nasty turn when Stanga turns up dead after a fierce beating by Purcel in front of numerous witnesses. Adding to Robicheaux’s troubles is his daughter Alafair’s romantic involvement with the scion of a once-prominent Louisiana family whom Robicheaux suspects is involved in some very shady business. To protect his daughter and clear his best friend’s name, Robicheaux will need every ounce of guts, wit, and investigative chops he can muster.

James Lee Burke One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of ten short stories centered around the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi during and after Katrina.

In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke elegantly marries his flair for gripping storytelling with his lyrical writing style and complex, fascinating character portraits. The backdrop of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is a versatile setting for Burke’s stories, which cover the scope of the human experience—from love and sex to domestic abuse to war, death, and friendship.

James Lee Burke The Holland boys are back in town.

Billy Bob and Hackberry Holland are two hard-nosed Texas lawmen who just happen to be cousins. This boxed set includes In the Moon of Red Ponies, a Billy Bob Holland classic, and Rain Gods, where Hackberry Holland makes his full-length debut, plus a sneak peek at its sequel, Feast Day of Fools. New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

In the Moon of Red Ponies

Former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has hardly settled his family and his business in their new home in Montana when trouble finds him once again. His first client in Missoula is Johnny American Horse, a young Native American activist charged with the murder of two mysterious men who seem to have recently tried to kill Johnny themselves, or at least scare him off his political causes. As Billy Bob investigates, he discovers a web of intrigue surrounding the case and its players—Johnny's girlfriend Amber Finley; Darrel McComb, a Missoula police detective who’s obsessed with Amber; and Seth Masterson, an enigmatic federal agent—and a greater danger that threatens himself and his whole family.

Rain Gods

Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border hoping to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave, soon makes it clear he won't escape so easily. The key to the case seems to lie with Pete Flores, a damaged young Iraq veteran, and his girlfriend Vikki Gaddis, who have disappeared. For Hack and Deputy Sheriff Pam Tibbs to untangle the threads of this grisly case, they’ll have to find Pete and Vikki before the FBI, Border Patrol, and a host of cold-blooded killers—including the enigmatic Preacher Jack Collins—catch up to them…

Feast Day of Fools (excerpt)

Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife, and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his much younger deputy, Hackberry Holland feeds off of the deeds of evil men to keep his own demons at bay. And when a local drunk named Danny Boy Lorca comes to town dead sober, telling gruesome tales of torture and murder and begging to be locked in the drunk tank, it becomes clear that the desert holds all the evil Hack can handle. It seems the ruthless serial killer Preacher Jack Collins is alive and well in the harsh Texas wilderness—alongside illegal aliens, federal agents, and a mysterious Chinese woman whose steely demeanor and aristocratic beauty remind Hack of his deceased wife, and who may or may not be drawing him into a deadly trap.

James Lee Burke Three classic novels from the Bard of the Bayou

This boxed set includes three novels featuring fan favorite Detective Dave Robicheaux as he does battle with the forces of evil, and with his own soul, in Louisiana’s famous bayou country. New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Jolie Blon’s Bounce

New Iberia, Louisiana, is reeling from a one-two punch of brutal rape-homicides, and drug-addicted blues singer Tee Bobby Hulin has been tagged as the prime suspect. No stranger to bucking popular opinion, police detective Dave Robicheaux is convinced they’ve got the wrong man. But while placating a town on fire for swift revenge, Robicheaux must face his own demons in the form of Legion Guidry, a diabolical figure whose hardcore brand of violence left Robicheaux humiliated and addicted to painkillers. With his longtime friend, the boozing and womanizing Clete Purcel, Robicheaux treads among land mines of injustice, mob payoffs, and deadly secrets, all the while guessing: whom can he trust—and whom should he fear?

Last Car to Elysian Fields

For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. When an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, is brutally attacked in New Orleans, Robicheaux knows he has to return there to investigate, visiting old ghosts and exposing old wounds. The trouble continues when Father Jimmie asks Robicheaux to help investigate the presence of a toxic landfill near St. James Parish, which in turn leads to a search for the truth behind the disappearance many years before of a legendary blues musician and composer. Trying to connect these seemingly disparate threads of crime, Robicheaux finds himself drawn into a web of sordid secrets and escalating violence that sends echoes down the lonely corridors of his own unresolved past.

Crusader’s Cross

Time and suffering have taught Detective Dave Robicheaux that memories—including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth—are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to raise new questions about a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin, and Robicheaux's half brother, Jimmie, paid a brutal price for entering her world. Resurrecting the truth about the mysterious Miss Durbin will plunge Robicheaux into the insidious machinations of New Orleans' wealthiest family, into a complex love affair of his own, and into hot pursuit of a ruthless killer expanding his territory beyond the Big Easy at a frightening pace.

James Lee Burke Catch up on Dave Robicheaux’s latest adventures.

This boxed set includes the three most recent novels featuring fan favorite Detective Dave Robicheaux, The Tin Roof Blowdown, Swan Peak, and The Glass Rainbow, plus an excerpt from the next Robicheaux novel, Creole Belle (publishing July 2012). Robicheaux’s creator, New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke, is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Tin Roof BlowdownIn the waning days of summer, 2005, a storm of unfathomable force peels the face off southern Louisiana. This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers as he is deployed to New Orleans: Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with bodies, as well as looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid destroyed, New Orleans is reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. In the midst of an apocalyptic nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city.

Swan PeakSwan Peak finds Detective Robicheaux far from his New Iberia roots, fleeing with his wife and his old buddy Clete Purcel from the harsh, gritty landscape of post-Katrina Louisiana to a ranch in rural Montana. The serenity of the untouched wilderness is soon shattered when two college students are brutally murdered in the hills behind the ranch, and Clete and Dave are quickly ensnared in a dangerous mystery with a twisted cast of characters including a vicious oil tycoon, a sexually deviant minister, an escaped con and former country music star, and a vigilante Texas gunbull out for blood. All the while, Clete can’t shake the feeling that he’s being haunted by a ghost from his past: Sally Dio, the mob boss he sabotaged and killed years ago.

The Glass RainbowDetective Dave Robicheaux and his partner, Clete Purcel, are on the trail of a killer responsible for the deaths of seven young women—a trail that always seems to lead back to the notorious pimp Herman Stanga, whom they both despise. But the case takes a nasty turn when Stanga turns up dead after a fierce beating by Purcel in front of numerous witnesses. Adding to Robicheaux’s troubles is his daughter Alafair’s romantic involvement with the scion of a once-prominent Louisiana family whom Robicheaux suspects is involved in some very shady business. To protect his daughter and clear his best friend’s name, Robicheaux will need every ounce of guts, wit, and investigative chops he can muster.

Creole Belle (excerpt)Creole Belle begins with Dave Robicheaux in a recovery unit in New Orleans, not quite sure what is real and what may be the effects of the painkillers he’s been taking. While there, he receives a nighttime visit from a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton, who leaves him an iPod with the country blues song “Creole Belle” on it. Then she disappears. Obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie, Dave goes in search of her sister, Blue, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile, an oil well blowout on the Gulf threatens the cherished environs of the bayous. In the face of public indifference to both the blowout and Blue Melton’s murder, Dave and Clete must find their own way to bring those responsible to justice.